After several weeks, the first prototype of the tagging feature has been implemented. While the views for this feature are not final, this gives an idea of what the final product may look like. In the next few weeks, Nathan and I will be hooking the tagging views into the controller and model.

Feedback on the new views is very much encouraged! This is still a work in progress. Without further ado, here are some screenshots of the views.

The Tag View:

As shown in the previous blog post, this is the Tag view. This view is used for creating and managing specific tags for an assignment. The user is able to add, edit or delete tags and see the tag usage across assignments.

The Submissions View:

From here, we now have our Submissions view. Notice the new column in the submissions table for tags. This will hold all tags assigned to that submission.

In the submissions table, when the user puts their mouse over the Tags column, a dropdown appears featuring a search bar to filter by tags and a list of tags that they can filter by. To make the dropdown concise, only the five most used tags will be featured in the list. Others can be accessed by searching for them.

Individual Submission View:

In the individual submissions (Review) view, a new tag tab has been added to the right sidebar of the screen. In it, TAs will be able to add and remove tags from a current assignment and also see most used tags. Admins will have the additional ability to add or remove tags as they see fit.

There you have it. As always, feel free to check out the tagging branch of the MarkUs repo and again, feel free to suggest any improvements that you have on the feature.

Completed initial prototypes for the Tagging feature views. This includes a new tagging view and additions to the Submissions and Results views to implement the tagging features.

Created CSS elements for tags and tagging features.

Improved my proficiency in CSS.

Next Week:

Getting feedback on the initial prototype and making improvements to it.

Cleaning up some of the visual elements to make them conform to the MarkUs standard.

Irene

This Week:

Learned about how the controller connects with the models and views

Completed dashboard design (sketch and wireframe)

Started implementation of the new dashboard. I have split the view into two with the list of assignments and grading spreadsheets on the left but I am still trying to change the view on the right through links in the list. Still trying to figure out how the controller links to the view (getting a nil class error)

Next Week:

Continue to implement the dashboard. Next I will need to implement the functionality t hat determines which assignment to display.

minor revisions to migration files as a result of the code I implemented this week

opened pull request with migration files and models

Next Week

I’m not quite sure what I should do prior to Bryan’s view implementation being merged into the tagging branch. Once that is merged in, I will implement the code in the correct places to allow creation of tags wherever he has created an UI to do so. Also I will implement the code to retrieve tags wherever tags are displayed.

Added and improved a Tag view for the tagging feature. This view is not connected to a working controller but has working upload, download, create dialogs and a React table that is currently filled with “dummy data”.

Submitted a post to the MarkUs blog outlining the tagging feature and upcoming features for it.

Next week:

Adding tag functionality to the submissions page and the assignment screen. This will allow filtering by tag and assigning tags to assignments. This will still not be connected to the tag controller.

Nathan

Last Week:

Looked over the database schema and wrote up proposed changes to the schema for the tagging project

Read up on ActiveRecord

Unfortunately did not have much time to work on Markus due to other course commitments and going out of town for Thanksgiving weekend

This Week:

Begin implementing changes reflected by the proposed changes to the database schema

implement logic to create new tags, query for tags, and display tags next to submissions

Tori

Last week:

checking out React.js tutorials

looking over existing React tables for reference

This week:

conversion of table in Repository view to React

Note: I had a hectic sort of week and didn’t put much time into this course; my goal for this week is to put in a minimum of 10h and make up for lost time the following week, which should be less busy.

Since the UCOSP code sprint that occurred several weeks ago at Mozilla, our development group for this semester has been assigned projects to work on. Nathan and I have been tasked to create a new tagging feature for MarkUs. This post has been written to serve as a Q&A for this new feature and to provide an early look into what this feature may look like from a user perspective.

Tagging Feature? What’s that?

Glad you asked! Essentially, this feature will allow TAs and administrators to tag student submissions based on certain criteria. This criteria could be things such as incomplete assignments, assignments that appear to be really well done, etcetera. The purpose of these tags will allow people marking assignments to then filter the submissions based on certain tags. For instance, say a TA only wants to mark assignments that have a certain tag. To do this, the TA can simply filter assignments by that tag and then only mark those assignments. Voila! It’s that easy!

Another use for this feature could be for TAs that want to notify a course administrator about a certain issue in an assignment. The TA can simply tag the assignment as needing further attention from an administrator. Administrators can then log in to MarkUs and filter the submissions to see if any have this tag.

What has been done so far?

Now onto the technical stuff! Currently, the models and controllers for the tagging system are being created by Nathan (which will not be covered in detail in this post) and I’m working on the views for this feature.

Probably the most important view would be the “Tag Creation View”. Here, administrators are able to create, monitor, edit and delete tags. The motive behind this is that administrators can create “pre-defined” tags for the assignment before marking has commenced. As of now, this view has been created but is not connected to the tag controller.

The new “Tag Creation” view for the tagging feature. Note the React table and sidebar upload and download buttons. Currently, the tag data being displayed in the table is just dummy data that is hard-coded into the view. Don’t worry! This will change soon!

Essentially, the tag creation view was designed to be as consistent with the MarkUs interface as possible. Basically, other views were looked at and used as a reference to create the view. Additionally, the code for the React tables in the student and submissions views were referenced to ensure similar structure. This makes the code more readable and easier to alter and upgrade in the future.

As you can see in the pictures below, the upload and download dialog boxes are also standardized.

The “Download Tags” dialog. Note that the tag file can be downloaded as CSV or YML.

The “Upload CSV” dialog. This dialog is very similar to other MarkUs dialogs.

What can I expect in the future?

This is where things get exciting (relatively speaking anyway). Probably the biggest goal is to actually get the views working and to be able to pull Tag data from the ActiveRecord. This will get a working prototype that Nathan and I can begin to refine.

Something that I am beginning to work on now is incorporating the tagging feature into the submissions view. In this, the React table containing all the submissions will have a new column named “Tags”. This will keep track of what tags are assigned to assignments and will allow administrators and TAs to filter assignments by tags. Additionally, in the grading view, there will be a new pane above the rubric panel that will allow markers to add and see current tags.

Currently, Nathan is working on the database side of this project. He is working on creating a proper model and controller for this feature. In the next few weeks, we will begin the process of integrating this model and controller with the view.

Submitted an updated fix for issue #1726 (https://github.com/MarkUsProject/Markus/issues/1726). This improved the javascript code such that multiple independent file upload boxes each with their own upload buttons could be controlled independently of each other.

Created a model, controller and new view for the tagging system. This new view can be accessed off each assignment page. It allows administrators to create, manage and delete tags. The view currently has no functionality.

Roadblocks:

A major roadblock was learning how to incorporate views into MarkUs. It took several hours to ensure the links and stylesheets all worked for the new view.

Next week:

Improving the tag view.

Adding tag functionality to the submissions page and the assignment screen. From here, TAs can see tagged assignments and can tag assignments with preset tags.